Microsoft Supports Censorship

Roger L. Simon brings word of Microsoft disgracefully kowtowing to the Leninist despots in Beijing. To quote a Financial Times article he links to:

Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.

Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label personal websites they create using its free online blog service, MSN Spaces.

Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence.


"This item contains forbidden speech." It doesn't get more Orwellian than that. So much for Bill Gates' commitment to intellectual freedom.